To me, one number stood out above all others in the fiscal 2012 budget released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Monday: $3.819 trillion. That number puts the exclamation point on four years of fiscal irresponsibility and legislative negligence on a scale not seen since the nation’s founding. If there’s a worse precedent in recorded human history, I’m not aware of it.

It seems that almost everyone has focused on what the White House projects to occur during fiscal 2012 through 2021. Two National Journal writers even had some fun assembling a cute montage of what you could do if you had the $3.73 trillion the administration would like to spend in fiscal 2012. Meanwhile, though some have noted that the White House’s projected fiscal 2011 deficit will be an all-time record $1.645 trillion, virtually no one has commented on the higher spending figure the administration says will occur this year — $3.819 trillion – to make that disastrous deficit happen.

The following graphic demonstrates how completely Uncle Sam’s situation has deteriorated since 2007, and how utterly unserious the administration’s plans for future fiscal recovery really are (results for 2007 through 2010 have been adjusted to correct for items footnoted below, previously discussed here and here):

Contrary to established wisdom, and though it was way too little and way too late to get noticed by the electorate, the last budget passed by the GOP-controlled Congress in 2006 did a passable job of controlling spending growth. Their relative restraint, combined with the fourth consecutive spurt in receipts caused by George W. Bush’s 2003 tax cuts, caused the reported deficit for fiscal 2007 to fall to $162 billion.

Those were the good old days. Once Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid became House speaker and Senate majority leader, respectively, everything started spinning out of control. Outlays leaped by 12.6% in fiscal 2008 (9.2% if the 2008 stimulus checks from the IRS are treated as negative receipts, as the government incorrectly did).

They were just warming up. Once Barack Obama became president, the spending spree began in earnest. Driven largely but by no means entirely by a stimulus plan that stimulated nothing, spending skyrocketed again in fiscal 2009, this time by almost 11%. Meanwhile, receipts in fiscal 2009 cliff-dived by over 19% from 2008. A fairly narrow deficit ballooned to over $1.3 trillion in just two short years.

You’d think that the free spenders would have needed a breather at this point. You would be wrong. After reversing the effects of TARP-related non-cash accounting entries designed to make fiscal 2009 look worse so fiscal 2010 would look better, the chart above shows that spending increased again, this time by almost 5%; the properly adjusted deficit increased by over 8%. Keep in mind that during this entire period, inflation was relatively tame.

But the all-time topper is the $3.819 trillion the administration expects to spend by the time the current fiscal year ends in September. It’s an average of almost $320 billion per month. The government didn’t spend $300 billion in any single month until October 2008. If this level of spending really occurs, the insulting 7% increase over fiscal 2010, piled on top of the previous three years’ injurious increases, will mean that Pelosi, Obama and Reid will have pushed up spending by almost 40% in just four years. It will mean that federal spending, according to the administration’s projections, will gobble up over 25% of the country’s annual economic output. That is by far the highest peacetime percentage since 1903, and almost certainly the highest in U.S. history.

The fiscal 2011 spending increase is happening even though the stimulus program was supposed to have ended during 2010. That hasn’t happened, but beyond that, departments whose spending has nothing to do with stimulus are continuing to go hog wild.

I would compare Congress’s budgeted 2011 outlays to what we were spending in 2007 or 2008, except for one thing, typified in this graphic grab from Page 64 of OMB’s report:

Unlike in 2010, there is no 2011 estimate. That’s because Pelosi and Reid’s Congress didn’t pass a 2011 budget. I don’t recall that Barack Obama has ever complained about that. If I’m right, no wonder; spending has been and will be on autopilot this year until somebody does something about it. Democrats consider that a feature, not a bug.

Well, something must be done. The ridiculous level of fiscal 2011 spending must be reined back as much as possible during the months which remain. The $100 billion reduction that got through the House last week is a start, but it must be pushed through the Senate so that the president will be forced to make a tough decision: start winning the future, or continue mortgaging the future?

Looking into future years, the message in the 2012 budget from the president and his party to the nation’s 80% non-liberal majority is clear: You don’t like what we’ve been doing? Just try and stop us.” They’re betting that the American people and their representatives, even when facing the financial abyss — an abyss brought even closer by what Investors Business Dailyhas called “Obama’s Gutless Budget Proposal” — won’t have the stomach to do what must be done. Whether or not they’re right may be the most important fiscal question we ever face.

Along with having a decades-long career in accounting, finance, training and development, Tom Blumer has written for several national online publications primarily on business, economics, politics and media bias. He has had his own blog, BizzyBlog.com, since 2005, and has been a PJM contributor since 2008.

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1.
Jerry

Debt service is the 3d largest expenditure in the Federal budget and since paying interest gives no benefit to the American People when it is owned by the Chinese or the Arabs or the Japanese, that is where every last dollar of revenue should go until we can live comfortably again. This is the transfer of wealth that will be the hardest on our children.

Medicare and Social Security are the entitlement programs that are “untouchable” because Americans will be angry. However, every last dollar of these government programs is spent here in the US, so it is merely placing it in one pocket, ferrying it across the groin area and taking out of the other pocket. It is a wash, except for the inflationary losses due to having printed too much money. Essentially, we will be giving our social security checks to the farmers and oil companies and our Medicare benefits to the drug companies, hospitals and doctors. Farmers and doctors spend it here.

Conclusion: Build atomic energy plants and pay off our debts to anyone who does not spend their money here.

I live in New Jersey and the man of the hour here is Chris Christie. He has come to the people of New Jersey and has stated one, simple, message: “We’re broke.” Simple, right? And if people understand this fact, if they understand that the way of getting out of this fiscal hole is NOT by raising taxes and that the only SANE way of getting out of this hole is by cutting spending,then they also will accept massive cuts to the Federal budget.

I get a laugh when I hear on the news that “Discretionary Spending” represents only a “small part” of the budget and that by cutting that it will not make much difference in the budget. Well, if it’s so “small,” then why is it such a huge deal to do it? If Congress and the president can’t even agree on the “small” things like Discretionary Spending, then how in God’s name are they going to tackle the large items, like Social Security or Medicare? Even with the new conservatives in Congress and even IF (and that’s a big “IF”) they get their $100 billion in budget cuts, that’s only a small fraction of what needs to be cut from our bloated budget. Seems to me that, in a year or so, we’ll be more like Greece than the United States of America. That is, of course, unless we get someone like Chris Christie to get serious about cutting the Federal budget (and no, Christie is NOT running for president, so you can forget about him in 2012).

The house Republicans don’t have to “do” anything and nor do they have to “push” anything through the senate or over the pretender’s desk.

The “Democrats,” after all, gifted them with no 2011 Budget and all the Repubs have to do is severely limit the amount of spending they authorize by way of continuing resolutions from here until Eternity!

De-fund and Disobey every un-Constitutional edict and/or “law” and when the time comes selectively Default on foreign debt.

This is such nonsense. Have you not read Keynes? The notion that the federal budget works like our checkbooks is misleading and intellectually childish. It takes us back to an understanding of economics that was obsolete when grandpa was young. Money is the medium of exchange, not the goods and services it is used to represent. It is empty factories that make us poor, and the inadequate demand that keeps them empty, not pieces of paper printed by the mint. All the Republicans can do is cut, cut, cut when real Americans are asking where are the jobs, jobs, jobs????

If Keynes was right, there would be no recession right now. How could there be, in the midst of a $1.6 trillion deficit? Even if the multiplier is greater than unity, it is too small to matter, because the levels of spending required to make use of it are so enormous that they’d render us insolvent in a year or two.

Keynesian economics is what rescued us from the impending Bush/GOP depression. That is certainly no consolation for those without a job right now, but don’t kid yourself it could have been much worse. Even Ronald Reagan was a Keynesian, so you teahadists are way outside the mainstream of contemporary economic thinking. Reagan, even though his policies were not implemented under a Keynesian banner or with Keynesian intention, it did have Keynesian effects, and it did help pull us out of the recession of 1981-82.

Yes, I have read Keynes. Have you read von Mises, Hayek or Milton Friedman? Have you been awake during any of the last eighty years during which we have seen the repeated failure of ‘counter cyclical’ spending?

The only reason lefties like Praetorian like Keynes is because he confirms their ideology of distribution of wealth through the government. They don’t give a hoot that it has never worked. Or that it is completely illogical in it’s basic premis.

This is in esence what Keynes says: Increase production by taking resources from the productive and give it to the unproductive. Hahaha And they scratch their heads like the idiots they are why Obamas stimulus package is still not working.

Reagan lowered taxes. That’s the exact opposite of Keynes. When you lower taxes you take resources from the unproductive and give them to the productive. Which quite predictably increases production. I know those “subtle” differences are hard to understand for liberals. Maybe it’s best for you liberals, if you avoid economic issues entirely. I’ve yet to meet a liberal that understands anything substantial about money. But I guess you are just proud, that you can say a fancy word like “Keynes”.

If the Marx of Masonjar OH (a vessel not far from Cincinnati, I have been given to understand) be not sheer straight-up one hundred sixty proof _vox peepuli_, why, plainly then nobody!

Like his Prussian precursor, though, Party Neocomrade Th. X. Blumer could do with some friendly fire on the literary front. So, then: let his freelordship go to the slave market an’ buy himself an engels (they are cheap enough, preowned) who could point out what kind of impression it makes to bitch an’ moan an’ whine an’ groan that Erich Freiherr von Kantor _und_ Johann Freiherr von Böhner an’ His Neoëminence, Ronpaul Ryan I, Archpontiff of Janesville _in partibus transvolandis_ (plus almost all the rest of the Capitol Hill Association of Certified G.O.P. Geniuses LLC) are pullin’ their Party punches about the Redink Menace (Pat. Pend.) — WITHOUT venturin’ himself to indicate any punch in particular.

’Tis not too difficult for the Muses and you and me, sir, to guess what sort of circus the neocomrade financial advisor (so charitably to label it) is hopin’ for, but whether Master Wally Wombschool an’ the pulchritudinous Ms. Cindy of Wasilla can see what is comin’ down the pike at ’em is not so clear.

In any case, if ThXB (or anybooby else) has some good reason to tart an antipolicy proposal up as a riddle, I have failed to guess what the reason is.

The point of Obama’s budget proposal is to force the republicans to do all the heavy budget cutting. That way Obama can both blame the republicans for whatever contiuncy loses benefits and take the credit for a growing economythat comes as a result of budget cuts.

Democrats pulled a similar tactic when G W Bush asked Congress to vote on going to war against Iraq/Hussein. Why not give him the authority? There was no downside for the Democrats – if we were successful in Iraq they could claim credit – if we weren’t – they could blame Bush.

All it takes is the willing assistance of the MSM – and they’ve been backing the Democrats all along. No reason to think the MSM will hum a new tune anytime soon.

Not to worry. O’Reilly and Williams are striving to deny Fox a monopoly as they make their own beds before the rising hoard of those seeking documented truth. Just don’t get caught in the stampede when the sack inevitably hits the fan by court discovery, senate hearings or any other means. Though it is doubtful such will change their fair and balanced facially superior demeanor, it may drive more to internet news sources that have pushed for well deserved public oversight from beginning .

The people being hurt the most by all of this are those who’re disabled and trying to eke out a living on what SS Disability pays, which is in many cases next to NOTHING. No one on SSD (or other SS programs to my knowledge) has received a cost of living increase (a mere 3%, even if they DO get it) in 2 years. Meanwhile, Congress’ pay has gone up. Food prices have gone up, gas prices have gone up, yet these people are expected to due with what they have, which is next to nothing. To make it worse, many of these are middle aged people with no other source of income and no way to get any.

I personally know of one man who is not even 60 yet, has no family, and receives a mere $912 a month, not even $11,000 a year. He has to get an exemption to use the neighborhood food bank because he’s $10 over the Federal poverty limit. Is this the way we as a nation should be treating our disabled? Meanwhile, drunks are disabled for alcoholism (which they brought on themselves), homosexuals are disabled for AIDS (which they brought on themselves), drug addicts are disabled for their addiction (which they brought on themselves). What’s wrong with this picture?

In an instant you could become one of those parasites. Be careful what you say. But in the event you did, I’m quite sure you’d be sucking away at the federal teat asap.

Teabaggers talk a tough game (as they are simultaneously are kept alive by diabetes medications and motorized wheel chairs payed for by that socialist program MediCare) but they’d be the first one out on the street if you took all those guvmint programs away. The only problem they have with them is if the people using them happen to be brown.

The more you subsidize poverty – the more poor people who live of the government handouts there gonna be.
The more you tax the productive people, the fewer productive people there gonna be.
It’s pretty simple, even Keynes understood it.
As for your bigotry and racism against the tea party activists – well, it’s expected. People like you will always be haters.

Responding to a petty troll is usually beneath my dignity, but I shall make an exception for you Praetorian.

A federal program that takes in excessive amounts of money yet does not eke that same money out to its payees needs to be downsized. The bureaucrats running such a terrible business need to be removed from their posts. Once you remove the parasites running the system you will have more of the original money available to pay out.

Whether the person getting disability is white, black, brown, yellow, or any other variation of skin color has no bearing on this. If the government is said to be just, it is also said to be blind to all definitions of a person beyond the characteristics of citizenship status.

You are the worst kind of racist imaginable by assuming that “teabaggers” (That, in itself, shows your immaturity) would “keep the black man down” as so many victimhood advocates scream everyday. If you’re concerned that the elderly “colored” aren’t getting enough federal assistance then rest assured that they aren’t the only ones not getting enough.

If you don’t like how the government does things, be heard and attempt to change them. If you don’t like how disability is distributed, put your own money out there and help the people in your neighborhood. If you are on disability and aren’t getting enough, write letters and ask for help.

There are many ways for us to ease the pain of this problem while things try to change. Racebaiting and political insults aren’t one of them.

I believe the original post was from someone indicating that he does not receive enough in benefits to make ends meet. The program that provides that entitlement benefit is already in place and won’t be going anywhere soon, so arguing it’s legitimacy is a moot point and a waste of time.

And, what’s up with this born again concern about the debt anyway? Didn’t hear a peep out of you guys when Bush was throwing money down the rathole on unfunded wars and tax giveaways for the rich. But, oh, I get it, that kind of wasteful spending is OK when it’s going to war contractor fat cats and corporate CEOs but if you spend it on a program that helps, say, single moms feed their kids, that’s socialism and wasteful spending. You teabaggers are as predictable as the sun coming up.

Tea party activists blame Bush as much as they blame Obama. But beside your moronic use of the word “tea baggers”, you raise a good point.

Conservatives should acknowledge that the military is a huge wasteful government program. It might be necessary to have a strong military. But that does not mean, you should sing the military’s praises like some Justine Bieber fan, regardless of what it does. There are just as many fiscally irresponsible government bureaucrats in the military as in any other big government program. And there are many many places in the military that could be cut without jeopardizing security. Troops in Germany and Japan are some obvious places. But conservatives don’t seem to understand the difference between “need to have” and “nice to have” when it comes to the military.

What is wrong with the picture you are painting is what has been wrong with the way our budget continues to climb, climb, climb every year. You are using the same argument that the Democrats use every time they pass or propose legislation, because they are so “compassionate and sympathetic”. It’s either for the poor, the children, the homeless, the uninsured, the needy, etc., etc. But we all know that it’s really about buying votes from the masses, which is why the Democrats always support taxing “the (evil) rich”, the nasty oil companies, or the mean corporations. I sympathize for your friend, I really do. But note the following: If we cut defense we are making “the country more vulnerable to our enemies”, so we shouldn’t. If we cut the Dept. of Education we will “hurt our children”, so we shouldn’t. If we cut EPA we will “make everyone sicker from harmful gasses”, so we shouldn’t. It goes on and on and on. Where do we stop? We are out of money. We can’t afford it. Should taxes be raised? Compassion and sympathy have a cost.

There is a long list of blown out expenditures committed over the last two years that could qualify as unnecessary debt. These do not include the inevitable failures of the Medicare Social Security etc… Ponzi schemes that are coming due. The Porkulus package was spoils of war to the victors of the 2008 election and a trillion thrown out of the window.
Today’s often neglected sticking point is the State Department’s largess. The madness question is: Why are we borrowing money from one foreign government to give to other foreign governments?

I was remembering a scene from the shock and awe days of early Iraqi invasion when the State Department loaded $3 Billion of small bills into an air transport to help the poor and needy tribal chieftains of Iraq. Then I thought, from which budget this money was entered, perhaps the military?
If they are going to play with trillion dollar budgets, it would be more transparent if they had uniform accounting rules. This budget relies on a predicted 5% grow in GDP per year for the next ten years. Another favorite is the inflation index which excludes petroleum and food. That ought to fool all of us.

These people are at war with the people of the United States, and spending is their nuclear weapon. As Alinsky advised, they are using the system against us.

Forget the Middle East. Forget terrorism. Forget the border. Forget the Black Panthers. Forget the media prostitutes. Those things can cause damage, but they are not going to wipe out the country. But spending will destroy us. It is the battle that has to be won, and it has to be won now.

Two can play at that game: they don’t want us to cut anything? Too bad! We’ll shut down the government if they refuse to comply. Think rioting will help? Don’t forget who has the guns, nor expect people you’re trying to enslave to come to your rescue.

Haha, I’m sure you do……
Meanwhile, we can all read the numbers on this and past years budgets, and wow, you can’t. Sorry to burst your bubble, but we actually think and don’t just repeat ad nauseum boilerplate propaganda. But thanks for being a reminder of what’s wrong with the country and where the problem lies.

That is the whole situation in a nutshell. Spending us into oblivion. Shame on Obama and those like him who haven’t read their history books. This has got to be the classic definition of “useful idiots”. This will not end well.

I agree. As Philip Bobbitt has pointed out, the critical wars of the 21st century will be economic wars, thrashing out which model delivers those opportunities most wanted by the citizens of various types of countries.

The highly destructive Cap and Trade. An inferior health care plan that no one wants and CANNOT afford to pay. The threat to jail and/or fine those who don’t purchase the government enforced plan.

Massive spending as if there is no tomorrow. Fighting wars we have no money for. Massive borrowing. The Massive giving away of Billions of dollars every year to other countries, including the oil-wealthy Middle East, Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority organization who fill their war chests, build mansions and laugh all the way to the bank with free infidel money. Whilst in America, homeless shelters are filled to capacity; tent cities have sprung up all over the U.S. filled with desperate, jobless, homeless, NEGLECTED Americans.

Massive debt. The massive printing of paper money. There is no question that the total DESTRUCTION of America’s economy is planned. The results will be horrifying. In the once wealthy and great nation of America, millions of Americans will become destitute, hungry and homeless with no money or resources to help them.

Hon, you’ve been watching WAY too much Glenn Beck. It really is amusing to see how that rodeo clown gets his lemmings all worked up into a tizzy. He gets you to buy gold and put gas in his beemer by just saying a few words. LOL.

The benefits of Health Care Reform are kicking in and people are finding, not surprisingly, that they like them!!! But really, this is exactly what you are afraid of right? If people like their new Health Care Reform they will understand who gave it to them and who tried to take it away. Once that happens you won’t be able to pry that vote out of their hand with a crow bar. And you can pass all the repeal bills you want, and you can try to defund it and none of it will work. The train has already left the station . . .

But don’t take my word for it. Michelle Bachmann, that paragon of teabagging values, finally admits quite rightly that HCR will NEVER be defunded.

May 14 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

The deliberate financial destruction perpetrated against the American people by the administration is unforgivable. Future generations will never forgive the deep poverty and suffering they will be forced to live under because of what can only be described as financial jihad.

Organic, non-gmo fruit and nut trees and berries must be planted in all of our nation’s cities’ and towns’ parks and wherever there is available space to help the many millions of Americans who will soon be in a desperate struggle to survive.

They also want the Republicans to be the evil witches on SS and Medicare, and they want the Republicans to be the ones to propose cuts to any other program. After which little lenin will assemble his brownshirts and victims to squeal like piglets about the meanies stealing their “benefits”.

Let’s hope the Republican panty-waists have the guts to do it.

And hope they have a few people who can explain it as well as Chris Christie can.

I don’t see the problem. The GOP in the house can vote no. The voters are clearly behind spending cuts at this time. So if both Obama and the House republicans wanna play chicken, why should the GOP back down when they have the public behind them.

Don’t by into the BS that the govenment will shut down and it’s gonna be the end of the world. Well let it shut down then. So government employees won’t get payed for a month – Big F’ing deal.

I would like to apologize for all my previous posts. I was completely wrong in all of them.

You have to understand that I’m only a California college student and frequent bed-wetter who refuses to take his meds, so I parrot whatever it is that Charlie Sheen and Natalie Portman claim to believe at any given moment. I also channel Janeanne Garofalo a lot (and go out shopping dressed like her).

Look people it’s very simple. We just tax the rich and evil corporations more, and provide free on demand abortions for women and the problem is solved. I’ve learned this from Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow.

I fear he’s right. The majority doesn’t like what is happening but most won’t have the guts to stop it. Why? Because the liberals have sprinkled enough programs and goodies in all of this to ensure that just about everyone can find a little something they like and want to keep. Since all these people have a little piece they like, nothing will get done. Eventually it will all fall down, which I believe is the objective with these budgets.